Project reunites Nazi-era artwork with rightful owners

Do nothing, some Nazi thugs informed him, and risk never seeing his mother Selma again or else begin selling off the Stern family’s priceless art collection for whatever price a renowned Jewish art dealer — in Hitler’s Germany of 1938 — could get and then use the proceeds to pay for his mother’s exit visa so she could join him in exile in London, England.

“His choice, basically, was: you need to pay this much and you had better find a way to come up with the money,” says Clarence Epstein, who spearheads Concordia University’s Max Stern Art Restitution Project.